Recently, I’ve been thinking about luck. During fall semester of grad. school, I read “Uncertainty and the Use of Magic” by Richard B. Felson and George Gmelch, an anthropology report discussing the use of “magic” to overcome outcomes — think: using a lucky pencil on a test for a better score or wearing a certain jersey every time your sports team plays — and something’s been bothering me ever since.

See, the report claimed even subjects who logically knew what they were doing would have no impact on an event’s results, they still felt the need to perform the rituals as a fail-safe. “Just in case.”

“Just in case.”

I’m reminded of the friends I know who say astrology is “stupid,” and then proceed to read me their forecasts. My mother who lifts her feet when the car she’s in passes over train tracks. The ex-boyfriend who told me he was the way he was because of when he was born: “It’s just the Libra in me.”

“It’s a way for people to explain the unexplainable,” textbooks will tell you.

“People want to believe they have some control over their lives, even the parts that are uncontrollable,” psychologists say.

Maybe it’s the same reason I write — constructing my own charms and unspoken incantations out of the runes of English. If I put down enough about it, maybe all of my words will be talismen. That’s how magic works, right? Repetition, ritual, routine, reliance…

I stick them in an envelope and mail them to make myself feel like they aren’t meaningless. Or post them online or submit them to publications to imbue them with purpose. If enough people read them, maybe my spell will work. Perhaps they’ll enact change.

Because that’s all magic is trying to do, isn’t it? Trying to change the status quo or prevent change from happening. Maintain or progress — detract or destroy. Manage or diminish or produce.

But we all do what we can, and life isn’t easy. Comedian Patton Oswalt summed up life best in his latest standup special for Netflix (Patton Oswalt: Annihilation) when he says, “It’s chaos. Be kind.”

What does it hurt if horoscopes give some people solace? If someone holds their breath by a graveyard? If I mail the letters I write and never receive a response? Isn’t the very act of shouting into the void cathartic? We all have our own ways of shouting.